It ain’t easy. Given that I began saving Green Egg and the other dozen periodicals we got as exchange subscriptions for The Witches Trine, I began gathering materials for A Tapestry of Witches more than 40 years ago. About ten years later, I began compiling entries about covens and other groups that had announced their existence into a database program on my Apple II that Isaac set up for me; some of those entries still exist in the book now…. Read more

It was not easy figuring out how to write this book. The chronological structure (the warp) describes the evolution of the family tree of covens, Traditions, and lineages, as they bifurcated, mutated, and merged. The weft, as it were, describes the lateral movement, in the formation of regional associations of various sorts, Finally, there is the overlay of the web of friendships between those who have known each other for decades. All that is why I have called it a tapestry. Read more

Some people ask whether one can be both Pagan and Christian. If you think of Jesus as the Lord of Glory living somewhere up in Heaven who has a rule against belonging to any other faith, and if you define “Pagan” as meaning merely “non-Christian,” then, no, they could not overlap. However, there are Christopagans who manage it, by not defining the terms as being mutually exclusive. The inquiry has to begin with trying to understand Jesus the Nazarene—Rabbi Yeshua ha-Notsri—as an historical human being, and so must begin with the Gospel According to Mark. Read more

Some people have accused me of being unfair to atheists in my recent blogs. No, I’m being critical of people who are closedminded about anything to do with religion, a crowd that includes many people besides atheists. Why am I bothering? For the sake of those who can still grow, and anyone who decides to can do that. Read more

There have been many news stories reporting that the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” is as old as the other Coptic documents published as the Nag Hammadi Library in English. It now can be taken seriously as an historical document. The only new element in it is the words “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . . ‘” This concept is, of course, shocking to people who have never read anything but the four canonical gospels. Read more

What if it became possible to talk more freely about these spiritual experiences? What if one had something like a support group where it was safe to open up and talk about what had really happened, about how that experience was a watershed, transforming experience in one’s life? Read more

The Koch Brothers and Koch Industries cannot treat American citizens as they do and still expect us to support their products. Please share this message widely. Much of their wealth comes from activities on a level that consumers cannot directly deal with, but if we can begin affecting their bottom line, they might start changing their minds. Koch Industry Gasoline: Chevron Union Union 76 Conoco Koch Industry/Georgia-Pacific Products: Angel Soft toilet paper Brawny paper towels Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and… Read more

This is not so much a blog as a complaint about this system. I did not like Disqus from the gitgo when Patheos decided to start using it to manage the comments. Disqus now seems to be frequently malfunctioning, at least for me. Half the time I can’t see any new comments at all. Then they suddenly become available, then disappear again. I’ve also just had a case of Disqus decding to diapprove a comment, when I had done no… Read more

I’ve been working for the last 60 years on the complex of issues concerned with what we know—or think we know—and how we know it, which, of course, enlarges into the issues of the nature of consciousness, the differences and relationships between knowledge and belief, and the nature of reality—insofar as we are aware of reality, as distinct from what we think is reality. I think I’ve made a little progress. Lately there have been some well-publicized “debates” between proponents… Read more

Whenever I have mentioned “Gurdjieff’s Partition,” which is the concept that disprovable hypotheses are the province of science, nondisprovable ones the province of faith, some have responded that this concept was proposed by Karl Popper. Perhaps so. But the two men had entirely different agendas for why they were making the proposal. Read more